Technical Field
The present patent application relates to touch screen user interfaces and, in particular, relates to operation of a computer based on interaction by a user with a virtual GUI item, such as a virtual keyboard on a touch screen user interface.
Description of the Related Art
A touch screen is a type of display screen that has a touch-sensitive transparent panel covering the screen, or can otherwise recognize touch input on the screen. Typically, the touch screen display is housed within the same housing as computer circuitry including processing circuitry operating under program control. When using a touch screen to provide input to an application executing on a computer, a user makes a selection on the display screen by pointing directly to graphical user interface (GUI) objects displayed on the screen (usually with a stylus or a finger).
A collection of GUI objects displayed on a touch screen may be considered a virtual keyboard. Similar to a conventional external keyboard that is not so closely associated with a display screen, the virtual keyboard includes a plurality of keys (“virtual keys”). Activation of a particular virtual key (or combination of virtual keys) generates a signal (or signals) that is provided as input to an application executing on the computer.
Touch screen keyboards, by nature of the hardware on which they operate, typically glean much more information about a user's actions than can be gleaned with a typical external keyboards. For example, whereas a typical external keyboard includes a single “sensor” (such as a mechanical switch or electrical connection) or a small number of sensors per key, touch screen keyboards typically have many more sensors per virtual key.
It is desirable to use the information about a user's actions to make the user experience with the computer, via the touch screen virtual keyboard, more powerful than is usual (or, perhaps, even possible) with computers using external keyboards.
On the other hand, even touch screens, with their numerous sensors, typically lack the ability to directly glean some types of information about a user's actions. It is desirable to use the information available to infer other types of information, for example, information which cannot be directly gleaned about the user's actions.